Years ago I saw an exhibition in a small museum in Toulouse called Wabi cha the art of tea.
6 ancient Chawans were on show.
I was moved by the feeling of gentilness and power emanating from them.
Making tea bowls as a western potter today is not the same as making tea bowls in rural korea in the 12th century.
I remember talking to an other potter friend, he was saying he wanted to be korean.
He started to dress korean, eat korean,and speak korean. Thinking that would help him in his artistic expression. Only to realise that good pots come from an other place.
You can meditate all day and still make terrible tea bowls. .
In deed 'trying' to make 'good' tea bowls does not mean you end up happy with them.
Nor does the way of just mindlessly making thousands and thousands in the hope that randomness and chance firing will spare a few that will get the 'Wabi' status.
The fact is 'true' art and beauty come from the action of learning.
Making tea bowls for me is first an act of learning.
putting into practice the synthesis of what I have been gathering in skill and energy at the time I make.
I'm analysing now but the making of tea bowls comes out of a strong desire for making them. It is a free act, not a self conscious one and I enjoy it very much.

This bowl is inspired by the 'Kizemon' bowl which is an 'Ido' type korean rice bowl.
I used english terracotta mixed with porcelain and added coarse cornish sand.
I poured a slip over it made with jindezehen porcelain slip I made from some clay I got given after a demonstration of chinese potters in Aberistwith a few years ago.
Over the slip I glazed the bowl with a thin ash Karatzu glaze.
The physical making is creative with ideas pulled together, like a child inventing his own house in the woods.
This teabowl is for sale. check my website for details.
michelfrancois.co.uk